


Not A Hero Anymore

by Brokenhorn



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 06:15:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8275708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brokenhorn/pseuds/Brokenhorn
Summary: After saving a girl from a gruesome death at the hands of a grenade, Soldier 76 stumbles across her weeks later in an abandoned bakery in her hometown. This is the events of what happened after the girl, Alejandra, tipped Soldier 76 off about the location of the headquarters of Los Meurtos and their boss, known as 'El Rata'.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I took only two years of Spanish, one in high school and the other in college. Neither of them stuck. I had to rely on some online translators. I used the translation that felt closest to what I wanted to say when translated back to English. If there is any inaccuracy, I apologize ahead of time but since the setting is in a place with a Hispanic population, I wanted to try to create authenticity and suspension of disbelief by having characters speak Spanish.

Soldier 76 ducked down as he observed the abandoned factory from afar, using one of the hills along the outskirts of the town. He went prone, magnifying the vision of his visor to recon the place. The girl had been helpful in giving him reliable intel, that’s for sure. The headquarters of Los Meurtos was an abandoned factory of some kind, maybe automobile, it was hard to tell from the outside. Years of abandonment and the warfare of the Omnic Crisis had torn the factory’s sign down, leaving nothing but a rusty skeletal cage in its place. Electricity was still working, though, and any exposed rooms were left in the dark.  
  
_“They’re getting confident and lazy,”_ Jack murmured under his breath. _“Only a few guards.”_  
  
This night mission was going to be interesting. He crawled down to the bottom of the hill, preparing the remote C4 explosive that he had brought with him. It was a simple thing to secure the explosive on the building’s east side. It wasn’t going to do a lot of damage but it would be a good distraction. And if he could knock out the power… even better.  
  
The old soldier had scouted out the sewer pipe earlier. If the girl was right, they never used the abandoned sewers, giving him the perfect opportunity to strike up from below. _Splosh!_ His boots hit stagnant water and filth, thankful that the filter watered down the stench of filth, stagnant water, and whatever else had been dumped into the old sewer tunnels. Moving up the tunnel further into the factory, he found a maintenance door into the building’s basement. _Too easy._  
  
He braced himself against the door, feeling his body tense as he primed his heavy plasma rifle. His hand reached down to the detonator as he listened to the faint voices as the generator rumbled loudly on the other side of the door.  
  
_“¿Cómo me quedo atascado en la guardia de nuevo? Este dibujo pajas mierda está amarrado, hombre,”_ someone complained on the other side of the door.  
  
Then a second voice cut in, _“Deja de quejarte como una perra! Tengo que lidiar con ser atrapado con usted quejarse todo el tiempo.”_

 _“_ _Lo que sea, el hombre. Desde que el jefe comenzó a hablar con ese chico del Talón, la pandilla's ha cambiado y no de una buena manera,”_ the first man answered back.  
  
_Talon_ had been here? Jack tensed at recognizing the name. This was more than just a gang trying to take over a town, Los Muertos was a weapons smuggling operation and, now, he only needed to find out if they were giving weapons to Talon or acting as a middle man for selling them. In all his time here, he hadn’t been able to figure it all out but, now, maybe this was his chance.  
  
Soldier 76 felt the flower that the girl, Alejandra, had given him brush up against his chest over his heart. It was safe in his pocket. He never thought he’d see her again after saving her from the grenade, but life had a way of surprising this old soldier. She told him about their base, and their leader, El Rata, who controlled the entire operation. Tonight, it was going to end.  
  
The second voice on the other side of the door didn’t have a chance to answer his companion as Jack burst through the door, knocking the rusting and crumbling door with a hard kick.  
  
_Bam!_  
  
_“Santa mierda! Es soldado de setenta seis!_ _”_

The old soldier found one man already running for the stairs and trying to fumble with his gun, and the other was right next to fallen door, jumping at the sound and trying to back up against the corner. Soldier 76 pressed the button to the detonator and the earth shook, the man on the stairs losing his balance as he jumped from fright at the booming, thunderous sound of an explosion, and falling down the stairs.  
  
He unleashed a burst of gunfire into the fallen gang member before he could reach his gun, while the second fumbled with his pistol and dropped it on the floor. Too frozen with fear to move, he muttered a long string of prayers under his breath in Spanish as Soldier 76 kicked the pistol away across the floor. Up above, shouts and yells could be heard as the rest tried to figure out what was going on.  
  
Soldier 76 reached down to grab the man by the collar, pushing him against the rough, coarse brick wall, scowling into the gang member’s eyes, _“¿Dónde está la rata?”_  
  
The captive man looked surprised for a moment but squealed in fear as he was slammed against the wall, not too gently either. The question was repeated even louder, **_“¿Dónde está la rata?”_**  
  
_“En el piso de arriba! En el piso de arriba! La rata es en la oficina,”_ he answered in a panic.  
  
Soldier 76 threw him aside on the ground, _“Thanks.”_ Picking up the dropped pistols, the white-haired man moved up to the ground floor of the factory.  
  
Amidst the chaos and confusion from the explosion, a fire had started in the eastern side of the building. It provided a good distraction but there would be no way that he could sneak past to the top floor unnoticed. The gang was disorganized in the chaos, giving him more than a few opportunities to dispatch them one at a time, silently. Not killing them like he did to the man with the gun, but knocking them unconscious. Judge, Jury, and Executioner wasn’t his job, he came to bring his own justice to this town, not set up a legal system.  
  
More explosions followed as he ascended up to the factory’s administrative office. Apparently the factory also had several explosive chemicals, too. It only added to the chaos and helped the old soldier in his straight-forward advance to the office of The Rat, the leader of Los Muertos.  
  
The Rat was a bigger man than Soldier 76 expected. Even after blasting the lock with his rifle and kicking in the door, the bulky frame of the large man wasn’t caught off guard. In fact, he was expecting the vigilante to arrive.  
  
_“Hello, Soldier 76. Are you the gringo I’ve heard so much about,”_ he hissed, standing behind a desk. His voice was rough and coarse, damaged by a bad smoking habit.

 _“Yes, I am,”_ he answered back. _“Are you The Rat?”_  
  
The Rat laughed, _“It’s over, gringo. This isn’t some cowboy movie. You’re not going to get your happy ending.”_ Kicking over the desk, the large man pulled out a shotgun. The sight of it sent a shiver down the old soldier’s spine, it looked familiar. It was the same kind of shotgun that Reyes—

The blast knocked him off his feet and down the metal stairs, tumbling over himself as he hit the bottom with a hard thud. It wasn’t a direct hit, either the gang boss wasn’t aiming to kill him right away or the kick of the gun itself directed most of the shrapnel into his shoulder. Regardless, the man stood over him at the top of the stairs. _“_  
  
_This town is mine, Soldier 76! It doesn’t belong to the government, it doesn’t belong to the mayor, it belongs to me,”_ The Rat announced over the chaos as the fire had spread through the factory. A few more explosions rocked and shook the ground. _“Blowing up the factory isn’t going to stop me.”_  
  
Soldier 76 reached for his rifle, but it was too far. He squirmed on the ground, he must have broken something, the fall shook him up pretty badly. Pain boomed in his shoulder and through his sore, old body. Another reminder that he wasn’t a young man, not anymore. The plasma rifle was out of reach, even from his groping digits as they clawed at the cold concrete floor.  
  
_“Nothing is going to stop me! Omnics couldn’t kill me,”_ the man went on, jabbing a finger into the scars that crossed his face and even an old burn scar on the left side down his neck and under his shirt. _“And neither will you.”_ He descended down the stairs, shotgun cocked and ready to put an end to the gringo that had been a thorn in his side for too long.  
  
_“And that girl you saved?”_ Soldier 76 froze, looking up at The Rat, his body tensing against the pain as his blood went cold.

 _“We know you met with her. We’re gonna take really good care of her, she’s gonna dig your grave, gringo. But first… That mask is gonna come off and the world will finally know who you are. Talon’s been itching to find out, gringo, and they’re gonna pay me well for the answer.”_  
  
The old soldier’s hand went to the inside of his jacket, brushing against the flower and also feeling the cold steel of the pistol he took from one of the gang members below. He chuckled first, and then laughed.  
  
The Rat laughed with him, so confident in his position that he wanted to draw out the old man’s death a little longer, maybe play with him a little more and let him bleed slowly. He rested his shotgun on his shoulder, pointing it away from the vigilante at his mercy, _“A man who laughs at death is a man who wants to die, I like that.”_  
  
_“You’ll like this,”_ Soldier 76 retorted back and withdrew the pistol from his jacket. Before The Rat could respond, he emptied the entire magazine into the large man until the pistol did nothing more than harmlessly click. His opponent fell over and landed on top of him, dead and still.  
  
Another explosion shook the factory, the damage doing more than its fair share of completely demolishing most of the facility. Smaller explosions shook the base as the munitions that the gang had been smuggling in and out of the town were soon lost to the chemical fires that spread so quickly. It was an unexpected result of his distraction that the soldier wasn’t going to complain about.  
  
Crawling out from under the dead body of the heavy gang leader, though, took more time than he would have liked. He staggered up to his feet, clutching his bleeding shoulder as he picked up his rifle and shambled away from the factory. Whoever was left from the gang didn’t seem to notice, either disoriented from the chaos or also similarly injured.  
  
There were cries of help that fell deaf on the soldier’s ears as he stumbled away from the fiery chaos and towards the tan building that was the agreed meeting place, the girl promised she’d be there with supplies. He was going to need them, unable to use his biotic field packs or else he’d seal the shrapnel inside his body. The cries that pleaded and begged him to help started to fade away as he left the crumbling factory behind. Why did that girl, Alejandra, call him a hero? He was leaving them to **_die._** He wasn’t a _hero._  
  
_Not anymore._


End file.
